First things first, I browsed this site quite often, and well... here are some great people, interesting topics, and of course helpful tutorials.So today I thought it was time to join this community!

A few details about me and programming:I'm from Germany (so sorry for bad English ) and my first programming experience was making a simple calculator and a lottery game at school, both with Java. After that programming was left behind until I went to university where I learned some Scheme and horrible Java practices (though at that time I thought it was the good way)... Soon I left there because it was too theoretical and went to college (don't know if it is the right word, but it's Hochschule in German, it's almost similar to an university but more practical), there I had more Java, but this time with an awesome teacher! I also learned some C# (making a simple client for a server game) and C++ (didn't like it though) there, and Visual Basic.NET at internship. With VB.NET I made a Pong game out of boredom (wasn't my duty but my boss liked that game ).That would be my rough programming experience until now...

So why am I here? First I wanted to thanks everyone who contributed a tutorial or article on this site, it was interesting and helpful to read them. And thanks to the LWJGL Team for that great Java API! (I know some of them are lurking around here )Also my favorite programming language is Java and right now I'm learning LWJGL and will soon start making some games, maybe it'll be a long way to my first good game but I think I'm in the right community here for that!

I'll hope we all will be on good terms and that we can aid each other!

Interesting to see a member's introduction, never really thought about those. We should have some sort of seperate board for them or something, so we get to know the new people.

Welcome to the forum, thanks for telling us about you

You say that you're learning LWJGL, but this is (relatively) the first time you've done actual graphics programming in Java? If you understand it fine because of your previous programming experience, that's good please ignore this, but if it seems a bit over your head consider learning Java2D (built in java graphics library) first before going on to more advanced APIs. Java2D is a good introduction to Java graphics programming whereas LWJGL has a somewhat strange structure to new people.

You say that you're learning LWJGL, but this is (relatively) the first time you've done actual graphics programming in Java? If you understand it fine because of your previous programming experience, that's good please ignore this, but if it seems a bit over your head consider learning Java2D (built in java graphics library) first before going on to more advanced APIs. Java2D is a good introduction to Java graphics programming whereas LWJGL has a somewhat strange structure to new people.

I think I used Java2D when learning building GUIs (was fun to do everything by hand).And yeah... it is unusual to make everything static, if it is that what you mean by strange structure, but I think that's great because you don't have to reference an OpenGL binding or something! I know it can be difficult to start with LWJGL but fact is I'll soon have an OpenGL lecture .

His description of Hochschule made me think of what we call a 'Technical School,' which is like a college, but focused on getting you ready for a career instead of... uh, 'general enlightenment'

"Fachhochschulen" are universities providing vocational degrees (like the university institutes of technology in France) whereas "Universitäten" are classical universities. Vocational degrees aren't a warranty of being legally protected and employed on the long term. Since the beginning of the LMD (Bachelor / Master / PhD) reform in the frame of the Sorbonne-Bologna process, I have seen tons of brand new vocational degrees being created just to satisfy the immediate needs of the "industry". Despite the promise of nice jobs, it has driven an important part of the public higher education system directly responsible for the unemployment of lots of students and the degradation of the working conditions and wage levels of others. Therefore, what you call "a college, but focused on getting you ready for a career" can become a straight way leading to unemployment in some cases. In my humble opinion, the specialization for a very specific job shouldn't be the responsibility of the higher education system.

"Fachhochschulen" are universities providing vocational degrees (like the university institutes of technology in France) whereas "Universitäten" are classical universities. Vocational degrees aren't a warranty of being legally protected and employed on the long term. Since the beginning of the LMD (Bachelor / Master / PhD) reform in the frame of the Sorbonne-Bologna process, I have seen tons of brand new vocational degrees being created just to satisfy the immediate needs of the "industry". Despite the promise of nice jobs, it has driven an important part of the public higher education system directly responsible for the unemployment of lots of students and the degradation of the working conditions and wage levels of others. Therefore, what you call "a college, but focused on getting you ready for a career" can become a straight way leading to unemployment in some cases. In my humble opinion, the specialization for a very specific job shouldn't be the responsibility of the higher education system.

In the Netherlands theres a thing called "Hogeschool" which is also translated to "university of applied sciences" and appears to be very similar to "Fachhochschulen". People from a Hogeschool are usually much more practical in approach to problems than those schooled in a classical University, but on the other hand they often have difficulty seeing the broader picture (ofcourse this is a generalized view on things). In NL also there is a trend towards many, many new degrees beging created to satisfy industry demand (even when there really is no industry demand for personell schooled such or in these quantities).

@gouessejI like to point out that the education is marginally different the degree however is not.Doing computer science at a university gets you: Bachelor of ScienceDoing computer science at a Fachhochschule gets you: Bachelor of Science

Their value is nationally and internationally absolutely equal, they are the same.

@gouessejI like to point out that the education is marginally different the degree however is not.Doing computer science at a university gets you: Bachelor of ScienceDoing computer science at a Fachhochschule gets you: Bachelor of Science

Their value is nationally and internationally absolutely equal, they are the same.

This is not true in France, we use 2 different terms, the License (~=Bachelor) and the vocational License. The former can allow you to study further whereas the latter wasn't intended to allow you to study further but they preferred weakening the vocational Master degrees instead of helping more and more people who have some difficulties when entering them.

In the Netherlands theres a thing called "Hogeschool" which is also translated to "university of applied sciences" and appears to be very similar to "Fachhochschulen". People from a Hogeschool are usually much more practical in approach to problems than those schooled in a classical University, but on the other hand they often have difficulty seeing the broader picture (ofcourse this is a generalized view on things). In NL also there is a trend towards many, many new degrees beging created to satisfy industry demand (even when there really is no industry demand for personell schooled such or in these quantities).

Thank you for the insight which is particularly useful as I won't probably spend enough time in NL to discover that by myself in the future.

I disagree with that, no offense. Java2D is nice, but its not made for game development at all whereas most everyone ends up using some form of OpenGL with Java. Why not just learn it out of the gate?

I think your forgetting that java2D is very advanced for what it is, even though OpenGL, LWJGL ect all offer a lot more java2D on its own is very complex and allows for some great games to be created when u know how...

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